Rainbows at Burning Man

Friday began with pancakes prepared by a friendly and fast working crew of volunteers. They had a queue of people fifty deep all morning long eating their pancakes as soon as they could scrape them off the skillet. Ju-Hui and I washed that down with some banana and strawberry smoothie that one camp was making with their solar powered blender. Yum!

Around noon we went on our typical wander through Black Rock City before heading out into the open playa. Notable sights included mini golf, a roller skating rink, a fiercely contested (by people of both sexes) Best Penis Contest and a truck sized motorized shopping cart. (You may wish to refer back to the pictures.) Out on the playa we stumbled into the path of the annual Critical Tits parade where many hundreds of women rode their bikes with either latex paint or nothing at all on above the waist. It took 8-10 minutes for the whole procession to pass us by. I almost reached the point where I didn't care to see any more boobs. Almost.

Just after the last of those intrepid women passed us by, the wind started gusting irregularly. Unlike the previous day's dust storm which arrived in a sudden, solid wall, the dust came and went as if on a dimmer switch controlled by an eight year old. Luckily we were right next to the canvass covered pavilion underneath The Man because soon we were in a "can't see you hand in front of your face" whiteout even more fierce than the last time. I'm not sure where the paraders ended up but I really felt bad for them getting caught out in the open like that (not to mention the amount of skin exposed to blowing sand.)

For the next couple hours the wind and dust continued to vary wildly. At one point it started to sprinkle lightly and I went a few steps outside the pavilion to bask in it. The contrast with the 100+ degree wind made each cool drop actually felt like it burned...glorious. Apparently a decent rain will turn the whole playa (ancient dry lake bed) into a mud pit but that day it evaporated as quickly as it landed. Though still irregular, the wind eventually calmed down enough that we felt safe enough to leave the shelter.

We found some guys flying a two line stunt kite and giving turns to passers by. It was amazing how fast the kite would zip across the sky...it had to be 50 mph at times. I seemed to be a quick study and was able to make it do loops and tricks after just a few minutes. Ju-Hui, at 85 pounds after a big meal, put on a nice show despite being pulled a good distance downwind. I'm just glad she didn't blow away.

The wind and dust had mostly given way to an overcast gloom when we found ourselves at The Temple. The Temple had a peaceful/zen/Asian feel and the silhouette was reminiscent of a pagoda. As we got closer and closer the simple beams resolved into intricate carved patterns over the entire surface of the structure. Visitors were encouraged to write heartfelt messages to loved ones on it...a communal Postsecret. Come Sunday night The Temple would burn and send those messages out into the cosmos. For the moment, it was an island of the sacred in a sea of the profane.

We watched two real life weddings happen there, one with 30 or so in the wedding party all dressed in bright red, the other with just the bride and groom and scores of random, supportive onlookers. Rather suddenly the gloom fell away and The Temple was bathed in bright afternoon sunlight. Mother Nature was giving us a break. A spontaneous round of cheers went up and the shutterbugs among us wasted no time getting some good photos of the light on the white pine. Ten or so minutes later an even bigger cheer went up and the previous shots became obsolete. A bright, full double rainbow filled the sky, perfectly framing The Temple.

Now even the casual photographers were frantically digging their cameras out of their backpacks. I ran around frantically trying to get that one iconic shot to go on the cover of Time magazine. In my haste I completely forgot the optics section from my physics classes and ran ever further away. My intent was to get the full arc of the rainbow coming down on either side of the Temple in a single frame. The reality is that a rainbow takes up a fixed proportion of the sky regardless of where the observer is and all I succeeded in doing was making the Temple really small. Ju-Hui and I each got some good rainbow pics, but none that truly captured the extreme beauty of that one moment in time. Regardless, I think it was my favorite experience at Burning Man.